by Joey W. Hill
As he stripped off his shirt with barely a blink of hesitation, her eyes sparked with the same kind of heat that surged through him in response. The tattoo artist’s gaze roved appreciatively over his upper body, but her skill as an artist showed as she zeroed in on his existing tattoo and came closer, her fingers passing over it critically. “Damn fine work. I’m Jillian. I hope you want me to do what I think you want me to do. That’s going to be kickass.”
She discussed it with Regina as he stood silently listening. He saw Jillian’s gaze pass over the collar on his throat, then go back to Regina. While it might just be a passing look, Marius took it as an acknowledgement of his Mistress’s obvious lead role of the situation. That made his body tighten with a desire to do things for her that couldn’t be done here.
Restraining himself for her only heightened the deep intensity of that feeling, keeping him quiet and in an almost meditative focus on her, a functional subspace he didn’t mind experiencing.
But when he was sitting in the chair and the artist had finished the drawn outline, ready to begin the tattoo itself, Regina bent over him, touching her face. “All right with this, sweet boy?”
He glanced at Jillian. “Can you start while I’m kissing her? I want my mouth on hers when I feel the first touch of the needle.”
As Regina’s eyes flared hot with pleasure, the artist nodded. Though her expression was hard to read, he thought he detected a flicker of female approval. “Just tell me when you’re going to stop. Unless you plan on kissing her the whole time,” she added dryly.
It wasn’t a bad idea. He saw the sensuous laughter in Regina’s eyes as his thought obviously reflected her own thinking. Or maybe she just read his face.
Reaching up, he curved his large hand against Regina’s delicate throat and brought her down to his mouth, taking a deep, demanding dive into that heated wetness, letting her feel it. He might be a sub, but there were times that need ironically drove him to take over, prove to her just how much testosterone was hers to call. She made a soft little moan, her fingertips curling over his hand, nails digging in. He felt the sharp burn as Jillian began the outline, and kept the kiss going a few seconds longer before he eased his mouth back enough to speak.
“Okay.”
The tattoo artist let him readjust, and then resumed. Regina took a seat nearby, where he could look right at her. He didn’t say another word; he simply kept his attention on his Mistress as the tattoo artist worked on him.
Regina engaged the other clients and artists in casual conversation without self-consciousness, but her gaze flicked back to him often and stayed, even when she was talking. He could feel it like a touch, meandering down his bare chest and muscled abs, lingering over his groin and thighs under denim. With the result he got fucking hard in front of everyone and wasn’t the least bit repentant about it. Especially when he saw her lips curve with the knowledge of what she was doing to him. What she could do to him.
Anything. Anything she wanted. He couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel.
The thought consumed him, and had only grown stronger by the time the tattoo was finished. Regina rose and came to inspect the work. Her gaze lifted to his, her brown eyes alight with fire. “Exactly what I wanted,” she said in a husky voice.
Jillian positioned a mirror so he could see it better. It was a badass-looking black kitten, one paw raised in play. Yet the positioning made it look as if the small creature had been the one to shred through his skin and expose the armor beneath.
"Your first pet," Regina said, running a light finger around it. "If you take care of this one, maybe you'll eventually get to take the other one home."
The word hit him hard and low. To conceal his reaction, he looked down and slid his touch, not over the tattoo, but over her fingers. His Mistress was too sharp-eyed, though. She touched his jaw. "Look at me and say what you were thinking."
He shook his head. "I'll just ruin it."
"Say it anyway." Jillian had moved away to do clean up, giving them the illusion of privacy.
"She'll already be home if she's with you,” he said. “That's what I want to think of as home. What I wish was my home.”
He rose abruptly, reaching for his wallet. "No," Regina said. "I'm paying for this."
He shook his head, closing his hand over her wrist as she reached for her purse, his grip hard enough to catch her attention. "Not this time," he said.
He pulled out a couple crisp hundreds from a small wad of bills, and handed it to Jillian. “Keep the change.”
When Marius tucked the wallet back into his pocket, he noted a pair of new arrivals on the scarred metal chairs. Tattoo parlors attracted some rough-looking types, but there was rough-looking cool, like the woman who’d just added to his tattoo, and rough-looking criminal. They could be wearing the same look of tattoos, piercings, jeans and T-shirts, but they pinged his radar with a warning of danger.
The smarter-looking one of the two seemed a little too interested in the wad of cash Marius was carrying, and had leaned over to mutter to his companion. Regina was offering her thanks to Jillian, engaging in the kind of conspiratorial female discussion that normally he’d enjoy observing. Any type of shared intimacy between two hot women had the potential to become wishful fantasy material. But he wasn’t taking his eyes off these two lowlifes.
He expected Regina would have been savvy enough to mark the two as trouble if her gaze turned in that direction. Her nose for danger was pretty good, probably thanks to the prison guard stuff. Or correctional officer, as she preferred.
The thought gave him a grim smile, but didn’t change his focus. Maybe the reason she hadn’t noticed these two was because her subconscious knew she was with someone more than capable of protecting her from their type.
Because she damn well was.
As she touched his arm, letting him know it was time to go, he saw she was holding his shirt. When he reached for it, she hugged it to her, refusing to give it back, a little smile playing around her lips. He liked that, but when she would have drawn him toward the door, he squeezed her hand, a mute request to wait a moment as he handled what needed to be handled.
He caught her quizzical expression a flash before he turned and closed the distance between himself and the two men. One had started to rise from his chair, probably preparing to tail them as soon as they left the place.
Marius put him back down with a casual shove and got into the face of the seated male, the smarter-looking one. Though, on closer inspection, that wasn’t saying a whole lot.
The deliberate act, as well as his expression and body language, created a sudden lull of conversation in the tattoo parlor.
"I earned that money from fucking up guys far bigger and meaner than you two assholes," he said. "So you want to go to the hospital, you follow me. And if either of you threatens my Mistress to get me to give it up”—his gaze hardened—“You won't need a hospital. The morning street crew can hose what’s left of you down the fucking drains."
Straightening, he waited only long enough to confirm the message had been received. Then he rejoined Regina, cordially holding the door for her, his hand resting on the small of her back as she stepped out and he followed.
They’d moved into the awakening energy of a glittering New Orleans night, but his Mistress had other things on her mind. She walked less than two steps with him before pulling him into the lee of the building. Curling her hands in his shirt front, she kissed him hard and deep. He gripped her hips, wanting her to feel the urgency of his body, how much he wanted to serve her whenever, however. She’d said that was a drug to a Mistress. He wanted to be that drug for her.
"I'm not saying the testosterone surge always works on me," she declared as she pulled free. "But occasionally it does."
He grinned, and she sobered. "I like you thinking of me as your home, Duncan. Hearing you wish for that…makes me wish for it, too.”
As always, such a gift from her had the ability to simultaneously arouse, thri
ll and terrify him. She touched his face, seeing all of it, if her words were any indication.
“I know you're still going to be a pain in my ass. I don't need you to be perfect to want you. I just need to know you're trying to be the best person you can be with me, and you're always, always trying to be honest."
He'd never wanted to be what a person wanted him to be. Probably because he’d never thought he could even come close. But as he felt the sunburn ache of the tattoo on his shoulder, and the weight of her fingers in his hand, the desire was there…and it wasn’t a bad feeling at all.
He just didn’t want to fail.
Chapter Seventeen
Hell, why was he nervous? Why should he be nervous? He looked again at the message in his Zone account, which he’d accessed from the cell phone he carried now, more evidence of how his life had changed in the past month.
Temporary guest pass to The Zone has been approved. Your Mistress orders you to arrive at seven o’clock tonight. Wear what’s in locker #23. DM will lock you in jail cage. Your Mistress will know when you’re ready for her appearance.
He was surprised, but then he wondered if that was the plan. Regina volunteered to do one orientation a month for new Dommes at The Zone, which would have been tonight. However, last week she’d had to call another Mistress to switch dates. She’d claimed to have a class commitment that would run late. It wasn’t even one of Marius’s scheduled days to come see her.
He slept at her place three nights a week. She’d given him a protocol to follow. He could come over whenever he wanted on that day, watch TV, sleep, whatever, as long as he kept things neat. But when she texted him a thirty-minute heads up, he stopped whatever he was doing to run through the shower and shave. He would put on a ball gag and cuffs and get on the bed on all fours. He’d attach the cuffs to four chains he pulled out from the mattress at the corners, and hook his collar to the tether fastened to the center of the head board, a restraint screened by the colorful pillows she kept there.
He could do all that one-handed, because the cuffs were Velcro, not intended to keep him from getting out of them if an emergency required it in her absence. Their purpose was to switch gears in his head, become his Mistress’s pure boy toy—or man toy, as she liked to call him—helping her defuse after a day at work. And fuck, serving such a functional, purely sexual purpose for her never failed to turn him on.
The schedule had led to the discovery of other, more surprising things that fulfilled him. Sometimes she left things undone, like making her bed or washing her dishes, so he could do those things for her. He liked serving her that way, too.
When he was on the bed and heard the lock turn, his cock would already be straining inside the condom he used to protect her bed linens. She’d put down her laptop case, glance through the mail he’d leave neatly arranged on the kitchen table. She’d hum a little tune when she came down the hall, and he knew she’d be untying her hair, letting it fall soft down her back and over her shoulders.
She’d shrug out of her jacket, slip off her slacks and pick up the lubed strap-on he’d leave sitting on the dresser. Sometimes he left other things for her. A couple chocolates, or a trio of roses he’d put in a vase he’d found in her cabinets. She didn’t mind him being familiar with her home. Didn’t mind him considering it his home. Or him leaving her little touches like that she didn’t expect, so long as they didn’t mess with her instructions.
Once she slipped on the strap-on with its clitoral stimulator, she’d put her knee on the bed, positioning herself behind him. He was required to stay quiet and still as she ran her hands over him, purring her pleasure.
Sometimes, if she was in a particularly sadistic mood, she’d have ordered him to wear the cock harness, buckling it tight enough it cut into him as he got harder and harder.
Other times he was required to don the stallion mask and insert the tail butt plug before she arrived, the thick hair sliding along the back of his thighs from his every move. When she got home on those days, she’d replace the plug with the strap-on.
If he’d been a pain in the ass, which still happened more often than he wished, the dildo was thicker on those days. As she fucked his ass like she was a beefy lumberjack, instead of a beautiful woman half that weight, she’d make him strangle out a muffled proper apology.
It all turned him on, but the most intense moments were those first few, when he shuddered with the anticipation of her being home, of her touching him. When she wouldn’t speak to him directly, and wouldn’t allow him to speak. He was there to relieve her sexual need after a hard day at the office, and he would serve her well. That was what was required of him. She’d slide the dildo into his ass with a hum of pleasure and start thrusting, undulating, a dance against his body as she let the stimulator get her worked up while she thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew.
His cock would ache, feel so hard it could split, especially as he listened to her start to breathe faster and heavier, little moans breaking from her luscious lips. He wished there was a mirror before him so he could look at her, but that wasn’t permitted. Not until after.
When she came, sometimes it was like a dove’s cry; sometimes a hawk’s sharpness, a guttural shriek he felt all the way down into his gut and balls. He’d be so near that edge he almost couldn’t hold back any longer. But he’d wait on his Mistress to relent.
“Come for me, sweet boy.”
He would jet into the condom, his body humping and working the air, wishing he could be thrusting into her. That came later in the evening, if she welcomed him into her bed. If not, he at least didn’t have to be far away from her. Unless he was really an asshole. Then she’d chain him up in the playroom for the night. He hated that, so he fought his demons extra hard to keep that from happening.
She’d moved the pallet on the floor of her bedroom next to her bed, so at night she could let her fingers trail over his shoulder, his side, as she laid on her stomach and they looked at each other in the dim lamplight, talking about whatever.
Christ, it was so many different things, belonging to her like this. He’d thought it wouldn’t be much different from being in a club environment, but then he’d never been a Mistress’s personal sub, in a relationship with her. Like so many things in his life, he’d had no way to anticipate what this would feel like. There was the sex part, which was mind-blowing. But it was the other stuff—room for tenderness, for practical moments, for laughter, for living a life with a woman he seemed to need like air—that blew away all his foundations, all the crap bullshit defenses he’d erected.
He’d named the kitten he’d adopted Dot. She lived at Regina’s with Magenta, her mother. He’d expected Dot to gravitate toward Regina, but Dot made clear from Day One Marius was her person, in ways he thought only dogs did. She was in the window watching for him when he pulled up on his visiting days. She slept on the pallet with him. When he and Regina watched TV, she curled up in his lap or perched on the sofa back behind his head. Regina would recline against his side, her head on his shoulder. Life didn’t get better than that.
One evening, when Regina was in the middle of her post-work fucking of his ass, Dot jumped on Marius’s back, kneading and cutting a couple circles before she curled up in the small of it for a catnap, utterly oblivious to what they were doing, or the rhythmic movement of their bodies, though she did rub her face against Regina’s fingers, gripping Marius’s hip.
Her timing had been so perfect, Regina on the cusp of climax. His Mistress had muttered “screw it,” laughter in her voice, and had her orgasm then and there, commanding Marius to come, which he’d managed, though they’d been laughing throughout it. Which had been silly and fun. Another surprise.
Dot also had a command post on the top of the home office chair, kneading his shoulder when he used Regina’s computer with her permission and looked at job options. He was considering enrolling in a program to become a certified nursing assistant, with the thought he might be able to train to be a nurse if he did
well as a CNA. Or become an EMT and train to be a paramedic, something like that. Regina had put him in touch with a job counselor at the community college where she was doing her corporate stuff, and that counselor had given him some material to study and work on until enrollment opened for the next semester.
Sometimes he thought he was crazy, but when he’d finally worked up the courage to tell Regina the options that interested him, she’d brightened.
“I think you’d be great in any of those fields,” she said. “You like taking care of people, particularly women. Let me know how I can help.”
She still kept after him about talking to a different kind of counselor, but he dodged it. The fights they had over it, how ugly he’d get, were what got him banished to the playroom most often. One time he walked out, and she texted him that he wasn’t allowed to come home for a week. That had sucked so badly he’d vowed never to lose it like that again. But he still wasn’t seeing a damn shrink.
He was doing fine. He was past it. Why could she see so much, and not see that? His father was dead and had no more hold on him. Everything was going in the right direction. He wasn’t having any more urges to fuck with Regina’s head, except for the occasional flare up that, like a headache, Regina could see coming and handled. And he was getting better at managing them himself, learning that self-discipline she’d talked about.
Yeah, he had some weird flashbacks sometimes, and more nightmares lately, which didn’t make a lot of sense, because things were going right. But she helped him with those, too.
So he didn’t need anyone else’s help. All he’d needed was her, the chance to serve a Mistress who understood him.
He could pretty much pass as normal. So why the hell should he be nervous about a scene at The Zone, being conducted by the Mistress he’d learned to trust more than anyone he’d ever trusted in his life?
He wondered what she’d left for him in the locker. The question, as well as the rest of the text, had his cock hardening. Hell, lately it had been a matter of when was his cock not hard? She could get him erect as fast as a dog trained to beg. On command.
